We know that procrastination can hurt productivity, but according to Lisa Evans at Fast Company the opposite of procrastination—"precrastination"—can be just as harmful.

You might think that completing tasks before they actually need to be done would improve your productivity and put your mind at ease, but Evans explains why it's not always best to immediately put all of your focus on a task:

While performance on the task at hand may improve, performance on other tasks—like meetings, email interruptions, and phone calls—is going to falter because your attention is directed elsewhere. A procrastinator, on the other hand, may capitalize on that interruption and perform better because it delays work further. Precrastinating may feel better than procrastinating, as you avoid that nagging knowledge that you should be doing something else, but rushing to complete a task may result in decreased performance.

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For some tasks, giving your complete focus to it—and completing it sooner rather than later—is a fine tactic. Other times, you're overall productivity can be hampered by it. So take that into consideration when you're worried about getting something done. You could miss out on benefits from procrastination too, like having more time to incubate ideas or having more time to remember important details about the task at hand.